Battle Born

“Copy, Bullrider Two, good heater.”

“Rog. Withholding. Closing in for guns…”

* * *

“They took the bait,” Patrick said. He was watching the profile of the attack on his threat profile display, which showed all of the “players” in the range. “They broke off from Two-Zero and they’re going after the tanker.”

“Both of them?” Rinc Seaver asked.

“Yep… stand by. No, one’s going after Two-Zero, the other’s going after the tanker.”

“Aces, this is lead, looks like one’s after you,” Seaver radioed to Rebecca Furness on the interplane frequency.

“Roger. We’re heading for mother earth. Looks like our tanker’s had it, though,” Rebecca responded.

“We can’t let the tanker get nailed,” Rinc Seaver said on interphone. “We won’t lose Damage Expectancy points if he gets shot down, but…”

“But we lose a tanker,” Patrick said. “They might not want to play with us anymore if we keep on sending them out to get shot down.”

“Lock up that fighter air-to-air, Long Dong,” Rinc said. “Put him in rendezvous mode.” Patrick looked over at Rinc in surprise. Long reconfigured his attack radar to rendezvous mode, which was exactly like an F-16 fighter’s radar’s air intercept mode, and in a few seconds he had the F-15 Eagle locked up. The pilot’s Horizontal Situation Display now showed a set of cross hairs — keep the cross hairs centered, and eventually they’d smack into the fighter.

“Steering is good, Rodeo. He’s low and slow, closing in on our tanker.”

“Not for long,” Rinc said. He turned the bomber westward and cobbed the throttles to max afterburner.

“What’s the plan, Seaver?” Patrick asked.

“No one chases one of our tankers, sir,” Rinc Seaver said. He turned toward him, and Patrick could see his eyes dancing with excitement and evil. “No one messes with Aces High…”

* * *

It took only a few more moments. The tanker — a KC-135R Stratotanker, leaving a trail of black smoke several miles long as it struggled around the craggy hills — couldn’t maneuver very well way down here. It was almost like closing in for an aerial refueling rendezvous — the pilot felt like calling “Stabilized precontact and ready,” as if he was ready to move in and plug in for gas. Instead, he called, “Avalanche, Bullrider Two, visual contact on bogey two, a KC-135 Stratobladder, looks like California Air Reserves. Closing in for guns.”

“Roger, Bullrider,” the AWACS controller responded, “we copy your—” He broke off and shouted frantically, “Bullrider Two, Bullrider Two, pop-up bogey at your three o’clock low, low, low, range nine miles, airspeed eight- zero-zero, collision alert, collision alert!”

In a panic the pilot searched out the right side of his cockpit canopy. But before he could spot it, it was right in front of him—a B-1B Lancer bomber, wings swept all the way back, in what looked like a tight ninety-degree left bank. The F-15 pilot thought he could see the bomber pilots through their windshield, it was that close! For goddamn sure they were going to collide!

He thought about a quick snap-shot — just squeeze the trigger and hope to hit it — but survival came first. He hauled back on his control stick as hard as he could, then shoved in full afterburners. All he saw for a few seconds was the side of a mountain — and then his nearly blacked-out vision filled with blue sky. He kept the stick pulled back and his fighter’s nose aimed for blue sky for several seconds, not wanting to release the back pressure until he was positive he was away from the ground and the mountains and all low-flying mother-fucking planes. “Fighters were not meant for flying so damned close to the ground, not so close to the ground, not so close to the ground,” he kept on muttering, like a mantra.

It was an illegal maneuver. It had to be. His range to the tanker was less than three miles, seconds before claiming a gun kill. Because this was the first day of the exercise, the ROE stated all opposing aircraft could close to no less than two miles, and closure rates were restricted to less than one thousand knots — no going nose-to-nose over the sound barrier. The F-15 pilot knew the rules, knew the bomber pukes busted the rules, knew he could get the AWACS radar controller to document the entire violation…

… but he didn’t call “knock it off” and report the violation. Once he leveled off — at eighteen thousand feet, high enough that he knew he wouldn’t hit any mountains — he had to laugh and, yes, tip his hat to the fucking bomber pukes. They saved their tanker and chased the United States’ most advanced air superiority fighter right out of the damned playground. By the time he got himself turned around, reoriented, and pointed back toward the players, the KC-135 tanker decoy had exited the range complex and was on his way home.

He was never, never going to live this one down.

* * *

“Hey, lead, we got you drifting out to eleven miles,” Rebecca Furness radioed to her wingman on the inter- plane frequency. “You defensive?”

“That’s a big negative, Go-Fast,” Rinc responded. “Just had to chase some fighter pukes out of our range. Break. Pioneer One-Seven, this is Aces Two-One, tail’s clear, you are clear to exit the range direct Hokum intersection. Squawk normal and contact Joshua Approach. See you in the patrol anchor. Thanks for your help. We owe you a night on the town.”

“Pioneer Seventeen, roger,” the pilot of the KC-135R tanker replied happily. “Thanks for the pick. We liked flying in the dirt with you guys. Go kick some butt. We’re outta here.”

“Thanks, Pioneer,” Rinc radioed. “Break. Aces lead, you’re clear down the chute. We’ll keep your tail clear. You better drop some shacks, or don’t bother comin’ home. We’re right behind you.” On interphone, he said, “Okay, hogs: we keep our wingman’s tail clear, we drop all zero-zeros, and we don’t screw up. Keep it tight and lean forward. No mistakes.”

Patrick had seen it all happen right before him — he thought he was going to die. He didn’t know — didn’t want to know — how close they came to that F-15 Eagle fighter. It was close enough to see the pilot’s unit patches on his sleeve, see the collar of his flight suit turned up, see the kink in his oxygen hose as he looked out his big canopy and saw the big B-1 barreling down on him. Hell, it had to be close enough to hear that F-15 driver’s asshole slam shut as he saw his windscreen fill up with 400,000 pounds of Bone cracking the speed of heat. Patrick knew it, because he thought he’d heard his own asshole do the same thing!

He would find out exactly how close later from the AWACS guys and the Nellis range controllers, since they had all the planes and the entire fifty thousand square miles of bombing ranges fully instrumented and could re- create every moment of a battle in exquisite computerized detail. When someone is that close to death or disaster, you can feel it coming at you — you don’t need windows or radar or anything. In his eighteen-year career, Patrick had felt that feeling many, many, many times. They certainly busted the ROE big-time, and they probably came within seconds of creating one of the most spectacular midair collisions in the history of aviation. The tiniest of deviations — just a few seconds off, a few miles off, one extra turn, crossing east around a peak instead of west, a half-degree steeper dive or 1 percent more airspeed — could have had disastrous results.

“Center up, steering is good,” John Long announced. His voice boomed over the quiet interphone channel like a gunshot in a tunnel. “Forty seconds to ACAL, sixty seconds to my fix.”

“You see any brown streaks coming out that fighter’s cockpit, sir?” Rinc asked Patrick, his voice light.

“SA-3 at two o’clock,” the crew’s defensive systems officer, Captain Oliver “Ollie” Warren, announced, checking his electronic warfare threat profile display. “Coming from the target area. I’m picking up high PRF and intermittent uplink signals, but not aimed at us — he must be trying to lock onto our wingman.”

“Give ’em a shout, Ollie,” Rinc said. “See if we can’t divert their attention away from our wingman.” Patrick shrugged — pretty good idea, although it would be giving away their position. Warren manually activated the L-band uplink jammer. At this range, the jammer would be only marginally effective, and it would immediately tell the enemy the range and bearing to the new threat. He shut it down after only a few seconds.

It worked. The “enemy” switched from the missile-guidance uplink to a wide-area search, trying to find the newcomer. It didn’t last very long, ten seconds at the most, but that ten seconds could mean the difference between successfully dropping bombs and destroying the enemy, and getting shot down.